Ecology & Zoology

I recently saw the article about the findings of Keiko the killer whale's unsuccessful release in 1998. This was a result of a public campaign to "Free Willy" and reintroduce him into the wild after 19 years of captivity. The killer whale ...

Blog Post - Gerhard Adam - Aug 10 2009 - 6:21am

Autumn Is Coming- Here's A Theory Why Red Leaves In America Will Be Yellow In Europe

The green of a tree's leaves is from the larger proportion of the chlorophyll pigment in the leaves. As days get shorter, less chlorophyll is produced and green is no longer dominant because yellow xanthophylls and orange carotenes are also present ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 13 2009 - 9:24am

Romantic Bats Use Musical Mating

Is there an "Air Supply" in the bat world? Not really, though they seem to have love songs, say researchers at Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin So let's look at the mysterious love sounds made by the winged cr ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 25 2009 - 2:41pm

Love Lupins? They Are Nutritious Too

Lupins of our lives go back a long time. The Romans spread lupin seeds in their empire. Many of the hundreds of species of the genus Lupinus in the legume family thrive in the Americas. Native Americans in the North and Incas in the South ate some on regul ...

Blog Post - Hatice Cullingford - Aug 31 2009 - 2:48pm

Humboldt squid make the news (barely) in Washington

The first Squid-A-Day is my very own study organism: Dosidicus gigas, the Humboldt squid! They seem to be mellowing out as they move north; after causing serious media hullabaloo in San Diego all summer, they squeezed only six sentences out of the Associat ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Sep 1 2009 - 7:47pm

Giant Squid Test Drive New Preservative

This is so cool! I can't believe I haven't been hearing taxonomists buzz about this. 3M Novec is a new engineered material that is non-flammable (unlike ethanol) non-toxic (unlike formalin, though Steve O'Shea swears you can drink the stuff ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Sep 2 2009 - 11:57pm

Squid Culinary Popularity

Proving myself wrong in record time (see comments on my first post, where I claimed I wouldn't be discussing squid recipes), today's squid is served with chiles, lime, and herbs. Why? The coincidence was just too good to pass up. Another commente ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Sep 4 2009 - 5:05pm

Squid Do Not Have Bones Or Hair

A couple of weeks ago someone found a " mysterious container " by the road in Atascosa County, Texas. Authorities in Atascosa County said the container appeared to contain hair and bones. They were concerned that the materials might be human in n ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Sep 6 2009 - 11:40pm

Vampire Squid Aren't Really Vampires

Rolling Stone began a recent article with this provocative lede: "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of hum ...

Blog Post - Danna Staaf - Sep 7 2009 - 7:58pm

Sex Wars: Class Struggle In Bees

It's not all balloons and ponies in bee colonies, despite what you may have learned. Bees are well known for high levels of cooperation but new research in Molecular Ecology says there is a conflict for reproduction between worker bees and Queens, l ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 9 2009 - 4:01pm